Circuits and circuit boards having rigid and flexible portions, referred to herein as rigid flex circuits, are used in the electronics industry to mount and interconnect electronic components.
Currently, rigid flex circuits are generally made by one of three methods: (1) the rigid and flexible portions are fabricated separately then are glued together, (2) the flexible portion is fabricated then a rigid stiffener is glued to portions of the flexible circuit, or (3) a rigid multi-layer structure is made first then a laser is used to remove portions of the rigid structure to create a flexible region. All of these processes tend to be slow, costly, and result in poor feature alignment.